What Can Alleviate Childrens Life from the Harms of Parental Maltreatment and Abuse - Research Paper Example

I. Introduction For those not inclined with the law, the law appears mysterious, frequently perplexing, and often disappointing feature of child abuse and neglect. However, for the affiliate of an interdisciplinary group, recognition of law on child abuse and neglect is quite significant, for devoid of it there is no legal tonic for the miseries and pains victimized children suffers. Conventionally, law directs people’s everyday interactions and communications with one another and with their bureaucratic authorities through formulating rights and enforcing responsibilities and tasks. Alongside, the law presents solutions and endorsements when duties are improperly carried out or rights breached. This body of rights, duties and resolutions create homogenous expectations of suitable behavior and allows citizens to meet the terms of the law through conformance. Within the framework of child abuse and neglect, the law plays a traditional role, although to some extent conflicting. In family court, the law identifies the rights and duties of parents and child guardians through marking out injuries to the child as signs of improper parental conduct or behavior. The surfacing or reappearance of these problems prompts particular governmental responsibilities that facilitate the state to interfere in the private domains of families and to alleviate their predicaments. In the criminal court, nevertheless, the state interferes to penalize the individuals responsible for these harms through enforcing consequences, such as fines and imprisonment. Hence, in similar proceedings, the culpable parent may be reconciled with his or her child under the jurisdiction of the family court but incarcerated by the criminal court. The rehabilitative and corrective features of child abuse and neglect law, nonetheless, lodge varying societal motives. A criminal tribunal, for instance, is embarked on behalf of the whole society. Hence, the punishment of the perpetrator of child abuse or neglect is congruent with the objective of the criminal law of justifying societal standards. Child abuse and neglect law in the family court presupposes that reconciliation of the child with his or her parents through therapy, preparation and education is in the paramount interest of the child. While the paramount interests of the child may not be proportionate with those of the larger society, and an ensuing criminal hearing may hinder family reconciliation, there is no intrinsic opposition at law in justifying both interests. Society, apparently, may prefer to give favor to one body of interests over the other yet, at least at the moment, both the criminal courts and the family will carry on handling cases of child abuse and neglect. In lieu of this, this paper will attempt to explore the conflicting obligations and duties between the criminal court and the family court in order to come up with an effective legal solution that could alleviate children from the harms of parental maltreatment and abuse. II. A Historical Perspective The evolution of the law on child abuse and neglect is a comparatively current historical occurrence. Even though by present criteria, child abuse and neglect has been present for hundreds of years, society has conveyed neither interest nor dissatisfaction at specific historical processes of child rearing. For instance, physical chastisement, even to the point of intolerable pain, was an approved practice of parental behavior. Apparently, even the Western acceptance of physical chastisement had its boundaries; fatalities through physical abuse were considered unlawful in the thirteenth century. Community customs that nowadays people consider abusive, still, demonstrate the significance of societal norms in identifying and changing child abuse and neglect laws. Child abuse and neglect did not become an official dilemma in the US until the latter part of the nineteenth century. The unprecedented economic progress of the US, which posed a greater demand for inexpensive labor most frequently filled in by youngsters, result in a growing concern over child labor and to an increasing community realization that children were being abused and exploited. The predicament of young Mary Ellen Wilson in 1874, who was locked up in her room and was physically abused on a daily basis, prompted widespread public indignation and emphasized the administration’s neglect in its managing of the case; Mary Ellen had been relocated in her foster home by the government as a trainee, but the government made no attempt to examine her circumstances until a nearby resident informed the authorities in 1874. In spite of the attempts of reformers, governments did not acknowledge child abuse and neglect as a serious dilemma until the advent of the sixties. An investigation in 1962 of district attorneys made public that more than 700 children had been cruelly beaten and their cases recommended for criminal hearing. Taking action to widespread public outrage, “the federal government’s Children’s Bureau, the American Humane Association, the American Medical Association, and the Council of State Governments” designed framework legislation for laws on child abuse reporting. In the latter part of the sixties, 44 states take in the framework suggested by the Children’s Bureau, which ordered reporting by medical practitioners and subjected them to criminal culpability for failure to comply. At the opening of the seventies, all except three states had obligatory child abuse reporting laws. Congress ratified legislation to mitigate child abuse and neglect predicaments in the federal system in 1990. The Crime Control Act of 1990 produced exclusive procedures for the recounting of children’s statements in criminal case put on trial in the courts of the federal system. Moreover, the ACT gives subsidy for preparing and educating court and legal staff and supports the employment of multidisciplinary teams in cases in which child victims or witnesses are involved. Congress as well acknowledged the developing dilemma of abuse and neglect among street children through endorsing the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Amendments of 1990, which gives out federal financial support for prevention, involvement and treatment projects, and obliging every employee who interacts and work with these children to put forward to an examination of their backgrounds. These federal endorsements, accompanied with judgments from the Supreme Court of the United States, have had a substantial influence on the progress of state laws on child abuse and neglect. Read More